Day 7 Recap: Dafne Schippers & Ashton Eaton Set the Track on Fire; Tianna Bartoletta Wins LJ Gold with PB on Final Attempt

BEIJING — Night seven of the 2015 IAAF World Championships was a great day for sprinting as fans in the Bird’s Nest were treated to one of the greatest women’s 200s in history and a ridiculous 45.00 400 by Ashton Eaton, the fastest-ever in a decathlon. There was also a dramatic gold for the U.S.’s Tianna Bartoletta in the women’s long jump, and a bronze medal for Aries Merritt in the 110 hurdles four days before he’s due to have a kidney transplant. We recap it all below.

Women’s 200: Dafne Schippers Wins Gold in 21.63 to Become the Third-Fastest Woman of All Time

The women’s 200 was viewed as one of the weaker events in Beijing as the two women many considered to be the best in the world, Allyson Felix and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, opted not to run the half-lap event. Maybe they’re glad they didn’t now considering that if they had run their PRs tonight, they would have finished third (Felix) and sixth (Fraser-Pryce).

It was that close for gold

Obviously we can’t make those projections, considering how fast the Bird’s Nest track is (four of the top five women set PRs), so let’s focus on what did happen: the Netherlands’ Dafne Schippers ran the fourth-fastest time ever, 21.63, to win gold ahead of Jamaica’s Elaine Thompson, who ran the sixth-fastest time ever, 21.66, for silver. Two-time Olympic champion Veronica Campbell-Brown of Jamaica took the bronze in 21.97 as three women broke 22.00 in the same race for only the second time in history.

Behind the top three, U.S. runner-up Candyce McGrone (4th, 22.01) and Great Britain’s Dina Asher-Smith (5th, 22.07), both PR’d in times that would have won gold two years ago but couldn’t even get on the medal stand tonight.

It looks like Schippers’ decision to switch to sprinting full-time was the right one. She earned a bronze medal in the heptathlon in Moscow but has topped that in both of her events in Beijing, grabbing a silver in the 100 and a gold tonight. Schippers also has the European record now, and it’s nice to see Marita Koch’s name knocked off the top of that list (Koch had the old record at 21.71).

Schippers’ victory is also the first by a white man or woman in the 100 or 200 at Worlds/Olympics since Belarus’ Yulia Nestsiarenka won the 100 at the 2004 Olympics.

19 Year Old Dina Asher-Smith Gets 5th with a PB

Only 19, Asher-Smith broke the British national record with a PB to finish fifth. She was super pleased, “Honestly, I’m really, really happy because I was in that kind of race where I gave it my all and I ran the best race I could ahve right now and it was only good enough for fifth which I can’t help but smile about.”

She was full of praise for the winner, “I can’t emphasize how amazing she is as an athlete.”

Men’s Decathlon: Ashton Eaton Runs 45.00 in the 400 and the World Record Attempt is Very Much On

Through the first four events of the decathlon, 2012 Olympic and 2013 World champ Ashton Eaton already led by 56 points over Canada’s Damian Warner, but he blew the competition wide open by running a decathlon world record of 45.00 in the 400 to close out day one. Eaton now has 4703 points, 173 clear of Warner. 2009/2011 World champ Trey Hardee of the U.S. had to withdraw after three events due to a lower back injury suffered during the long jump.

In the first event of the day, Eaton set a championship decathlon best of 10.23 in the 100 (.02 off his PB) but it was his 400 performance that was the most startling, as he ran 1.83 seconds faster than the next-best athlete and .68 of a second faster than any other athlete in history during a decathlon (the previous decathlon best was Bill Toomey’s 45.68 in the 1968 Olympics).

“I thought the clock was off by a second, I swear,” Eaton told USATF. “I did 400 hurdles last year and that helped, and some 400s against some fast guys this year. The only difference is that they start moving with 200 meters to go. I PB’d a couple of weeks before I got here at 45.5 and I did that technique, so [coach] Harry [Marra] and I have been talking. He said, ‘You’ve just got to trust it, Ash, you’ll run fast.’

“No way in hell did we think I was running that fast. I thought 46-flat, maxed out. But I saw some decathletes in the heats before running some pretty good times, so long story short it is, you know me. I just go and don’t hold too much back. So, I did that with the technique and all, so it turned out something unbelievable.”

Barring a disaster tomorrow, Eaton should win gold and talk will turn to whether he can break the world record he set at the Olympic Trials three years ago. That mark is 9039 points, and he had 4728 after day 1, 25 more than he does today. So even if Eaton has the win sewn up by the 1500 (8:10 a.m. ET), there could still be drama to be had.

Women’s Long Jump: Tianna Bartoletta Claims Her Second World Championship with a Clutch 7.14-Meter Personal Best on Her Final Attempt

Ten years after earning gold as a 19-year-old in Helsinki, Tianna Bartoletta is on top of the world again thanks to a huge jump on her final attempt to snatch the win from Great Britain’s Shara Proctor. Proctor got out to 7.07 on her third jump, a British record, and it looked like that would hold up for gold until the final round, when Bartoletta capitalized on a friendly 1.4 m/s tailwind to leap a world-leading 7.14, a personal best.

“I went for it on the first jump and fouled,” Bartoletta said to USATF. “Then after that, I kind of settled down a little bit and really began to settle into every jump. I just focused on what can I do better, what can I do better. It really didn’t matter that national records are being set, people were jumping seven meters, setting personal bests — I didn’t care. It didn’t make me nervous, it didn’t add pressure. Every jump was like, okay what can you do to make this next jump.”

POS

BIB

ATHLETE

COUNTRY

MARK

Wind

DETAIL

Attempt 1

Attempt 2

Attempt 3

Attempt 4

Attempt 5

Attempt 6

1

860

Tianna Bartoletta

USA

7.14

+1.2

WL

X +1.4

6.95 +1.3

6.87 +0.1

6.62 +1.3

6.94 +0.6

7.14+1.2

2

409

Shara Proctor

GBR

7.07

+0.4

NR

X +0.2

6.87 +0.9

7.07+0.4

7.01 +0.6

X +1.0

X +0.7

3

762

Ivana Španovic

SRB

7.01

+0.8

NR

7.01+0.8

X +0.8

X +0.6

6.86 +0.9

6.98 +1.0

7.01+0.6

4

221

Christabel Nettey

CAN

6.95

+0.9

6.95+0.9

6.85 +1.0

X -0.2

6.69 +0.8

6.84 +0.9

X +1.3

5

414

Lorraine Ugen

GBR

6.85

+0.7

X +0.4

6.85+0.7

6.73 +1.0

X +0.7

X +0.9

X +1.2

6

436

Malaika Mihambo

GER

6.79

+0.3

X -0.4

6.79+0.3

X +0.5

X

6.60 +0.4

–

7

797

Khaddi Sagnia

SWE

6.78

+1.3

PB

X +1.3

6.67 +1.1

6.56 +0.7

6.40 -0.7

6.78+1.3

5.05 +0.8

8

875

Janay DeLoach Soukup

USA

6.67

+0.6

6.67+0.6

X +0.5

6.64 +1.2

6.53 +0.5

X +0.7

X +0.9

9

161

Nastassia Mironchyk – Ivanova

BLR

6.66

+0.6

6.66+0.6

X +0.5

6.53 +0.6

10

720

Darya Klishina

RUS

6.65

+1.2

6.60 +0.6

6.65+1.2

6.50 +0.6

11

401

Katarina Johnson-Thompson

GBR

6.63

+0.6

6.63+1.4

X +0.9

6.63+0.6

12

791

Erica Jarder

SWE

6.48

+0.4

X +0.8

X

6.48+0.4

Bartoletta reflected with LRC on her long journey back to the top of the world.

She said, “Yeah I wasn’t doing much of anything (in the down years). I was trying to but things were so bad and I was so down and depressed and just not around very good people. My performances were just a reflection of how I felt about myself. I started to find my way back especially after I met my husand and things strated to turn around and I got more positive and more stable and more confident. You saw I made the Olympic tgeam in the 100, that was just the beginning of the confidence growing and growing and growing and every year we are like ‘what can we do now’… you’ll continue to see my develop,” she said.

Bartoletta has come a long way off the track since re-emerging on it in 2012. That year she would not speak to the press, but she was a smiling confident woman on Friday.

The full Bartoletta story has not been told (there were serious allegations against her parents and a lawsuit in 2012), but she is back on top of the track and field world.

Men’s 110 M Hurdles: Sergey Shubenkov Wins as Aries Merritt Earns Bronze Four Days Before He Undergoes a Kidney Transplant

The gold medal in the 110m hurdles went to Sergey Shubenkov of Russia in a personal best of 12.98 as he became the 20th member of the sub-13.00 club and the silver to Jamaica’s Hansle Parchment in 13.03, but the real winner on Friday night was Aries Merritt, who earned the bronze in 13.04 just four days before he undergoes surgery to receive a new kidney from his sister LaToya.

Merritt’s story is so amazing that we gave it its own article, which you can read here.

Women’s 100 Hurdles: Danielle Williams Wins Gold in a Race Where the Form Charts Meant Nothing

In the hurdles, it’s often the case that one athlete gets hot and steamrolls the competition all year, as Brianna Rollins did to win Worlds in 2013. Nothing like that happened in 2015.

The three medalists in tonight’s final — champion Danielle Williams of Jamaica, runner-up Cindy Roleder of Germany and third-placer Alina Talay of Belarus — entered the championships with the #12, #39 and #11 times this year, respectively. But all three picked the right time to run well (all ran PBs in the final — for Williams and Roleder, it was their second PR of the night after the semis just over two hours earlier).

Roleder’s improvement in Beijing was absurd. Though she ran 12.80 last year, she hadn’t bettered 12.92 in 2015 until her 12.86 in Thursday’s prelim. Then she ran 12.79 in the semis and 12.59 in the final.

In contrast, the event was a massive disappointment for the Americans, who held the top five places on the world list entering the championships and came home without a single medal despite four entrants. World leader Sharika Nelvis struggled out of the blocks and wound up last in the final. U.S. champ Dawn Harper-Nelson went down on hurdle #2 in the semis and didn’t qualify. NCAA champ Kendra Harrison false-started in the semis. Even American-born Brit Tiffany Porter struggled, as she closed horribly off the final hurdle to slip from medal position to fifth place. Rollins was the lone American with a solid performance, but her 12.67 was only good enough for fourth, .01 out of a medal.

It’s quite shocking that in two of the U.S.’s strongest events — the 100 hurdles and the women’s 800 — Team USA will be heading home with zero medals, and in the case of the women’s 800, zero finalists.